Cemetery act shows best of CongressReporters generally aren't an excitable lot. They've been there, seen that. Crime scenes. Political events. (Are those redundant?) News happenings of all types. It takes quite a bit to break the norm. So, when veteran reporter Mark Scott started bouncing off the newsroom walls this week, we knew something unique had come his way. The excitment in his voice was palpable as he relayed the story he was working on. This reporter had come across so...

Vo-Tech has agri coveredDardanelle School officials made the right move this week when they tabled a request to rebuilt an agriculture program at the high school level. Don't get us wrong - we appreciate agri studies. Our dark blue corduroy Future Farmers of America blazer is around someplace, and we learned a lot from those shop programs and outside-the-classroom projects. Among the things we learned: Never pick up a still-hot welding project with those heavy leathe...

Arkansas should join Web gridOften, "new and imroved" just means "new package" or "costs just a little bit more." But one of the latest things in e-commerce would do more than be new to the state. It would improve our chances of profiting from technology. The "Southern States' High Performance Network Grid" is a super-high-speed Internet system that links both coasts as part of the eCorridor, a nationwide technological framework that is pushing and will continue to push m...

Salary plan gets tossedThat didn't take long. Less than two weeks after they adopted the concept, some Russellville City Council members are ready to scrap a plan to equalize and raise municipal employee salaries. Members of the council's Personnel Committee met Monday to talk about salaries and how to spend the 2 mills of increased property tax money they raised at their last council meeting. Gone was the plan that spelled out every municipal position and every ste...

Dissecting this page made easyThis piece is a little different than any other that would normally appear on this page. Its purpose isn't to persuade, as newspaper commentary pieces have tried to do ever since Benjamin Harris printed "Publick Occurrences" in 1690. Its purpose is to inform, perhaps enlighten. This page is different from others in this newspaper. There are no news stories on this page. There is no contract that says words on this page are without bias. There ...

Changes will help customersNewspapers are not unlike other corporations or bureaucratic organizations in that policies tend to remain policies not because they work but because it's easier to live with them than to change them. That's why this newspaper's obituary and lifestyle policies remained virtually the same over an extended period. That period ends on Monday. And we think the new policies will find favorable reviews for one reason - they're user-friendly. A brief...

Taxpayers may still get voteThe ink had barely dried on the property tax hike passed by half the Russellville City Council and Mayor Raye Turner before petitions started floating around town to reverse that action. No fewer than three people have begun drives to force city officials to put the plan before voters. These folks may object to the idea of dedicating tax proceeds for a specific purpose, in this case salaries for municipal employees, but their main thrust is th...

Region's tourism flourishingAnnouncements over the past few weeks prove a point: The Arkansas River Valley is a heckuva hospitable place. It was just a couple years ago that Russellville hosted the 16-year-old Babe Ruth World Series. Next summer, Babe Ruth will bring its 10-year-old Series to town. Last year, the Bassmaster Elite 50 roared onto Lake Dardanelle. Next May, the event will return. In both cases, officials with those organizations cited the fantastic receptio...

Understanding conservative bias in the militaryBy Rick Fahr Courier editor As I perused computer files shortly after I returned from lovely Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I prepared to put together my first editorial page in nearly a year. In our system, I noticed one column that I hadn't expected to see. Cal Thomas. I didn't know we were publishing Thomas' column, and, in the name of preserving office harmony, I won't ask whose idea it was to start. I'm not a big Cal Thomas fan. I put him in the s...

Military bias? Look no furtherBy Rick Fahr editor@couriernews.com As I perused computer files shortly after I returned from lovely Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I prepared to put together my first editorial page in nearly a year. In our system, I noticed one column that I hadn't expected to see. Cal Thomas. I didn't know we were publishing Thomas' column, and, in the name of preserving office harmony, I won't ask whose idea it was to start. I'm not a big Cal Thomas fan. I put him ...

Advocates must now finish tax planAgree or disagree with the way the Russellville City Council went about raising property taxes to fund municipal employee salaries, one fact remains. It's a done deal. This epic saga came to an end last week in truly classic Russellville City Council style. A four-four tie, with a mayor casting the deciding vote. We wouldn't have guessed it any other way. So, after all that drama, we might as well focus now on ensuring that the additional fund...

PBS puts reality in TVIn an age when "reality TV" features people who swallow worms and an aging businessman whose most famous utterance is "You're fired," true reality is expressed in a television show unlike any other you will see this season, or any season. "The Question of God" (airing on PBS in two two-hour segments that began Wednesday and continues at 8 p.m. Sept. 22) creates a "debate" between Sigmund Freud, the atheist and founder of psychoanalysis, and C....

Don't bypass PottsvilleThe $30 million project to build a bypass along state Highway 247 will benefit many people in the Arkansas River Valley, particularly when the Intermodal Facility and an industrial park near the Arkansas River become a reality. This route is one of the three elements in the entire intermodal idea of highway, rail and water access. It is intended to shunt traffic, especially heavy trucks, away from Russellville's congested highways and onto a n...

Gen. Conway telling truth about IraqA general in the Marine Corps - not generally known as a passive organization - said something this week about Iraq that has been fairly obvious for months. Lt. Gen. James Conway complained that too many times, offensive actions have been started against insurgents in Baghdad, Fallujah, Najaf and elsewhere but then stopped. Citing Fallujah, the general said that once the decision had been made to attack those responsible for civilian deaths ba...

Mandatory training needed for constablesA 19-year-old man from Benton died this week after he crashed into a utility pole. The wreck occurred during a chase with a "law enforcement agent." That's "law enforcement agent" because the person involved is a constable. What the man did to draw the constable's attention, we don't know. Why the man fled, we don't know. What we do know is that the time has come to do something about constables. In Arkansas, elected constables serve as law en...

Mandatory training neededA 19-year-old man from Benton died this week after he crashed into a utility pole. The wreck occurred during a chase with a "law enforcement agent." That's "law enforcement agent" because the person involved is a constable. What the man did to draw the constable's attention, we don't know. Why the man fled, we don't know. What we do know is that the time has come to do something about constables. In Arkansas, elected constables serve as law en...

Who knew pigeons needed steroids?Pigeon racers in England have determined that some in their midst have been cheating. The cheaters have allegedly been doping their birds. Doping their birds. For shame! We really didn't have any idea what "doping a bird" actually means. One, birds don't have veins in a forearm in which to inject a drug. Two, birds most likely wouldn't get the idea of swallowing a few pills. Three, ... we don't even know what three would be. And that's really ...

106 minutes changed the worldRecent books about the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on our nation are not exactly light summer reading, but they bring some clarity to a difficult chapter of American history. More than that, they can confirm two important aspects of who we Americans are. First, heroism can be found just about anywhere in times of crisis, whether among flight attendants and passengers or among government bureaucrats. Second, while our system has flaws, and while our...

Three years fail to yield answersThree years ago, 19 men boarded four airplanes in this country. They took control of those flights, using three as missiles to destroy the World Trade Center towers in New York and damage the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers fought back. About 3,000 people died that day. A nation mourned. Then, a nation turned resolute. A nation's collective anger demanded a quick, determined and powerful respons...

Valley prepared for growth -- and getting itWe could do without most lunch meetings. The food generally isn't what we'd choose if left to our selves, and the conversation is about work, usually not even the good stuff. But Wednesday's lunch meeting of the Workforce Alliance for Growth in the Economy was different. Wrapped around the noontime meal, were comments from Jeff Pipkin, president and chief executive officer of the Russellville Area Chamber of Commerce. Pipkin, more of an indust...